Some rather recent and major developments in communications technology extend far beyond the traditional and long-lived environment of computer-integrated telephony (CTI) as adapted chiefly for connection-oriented-switched-telephony (COST) interaction and routing. Today, communications and interactions can be presented in media formats supported by various software platforms and applications, including CTI applications and platforms, and can source from virtually any communications main or sub-network including the PSTN, the Internet, and all sorts of and combinations of connected sub-nets, both wireless and wired.
A system for providing communication-center statistical, configuration, and other important business related data to third party applications over a data network is known to the inventor and is described in disclosures referring to U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 10/289,581 and 10/279,435 listed in the cross-reference section of this specification.
The system has an object-oriented interfacing component that is an intermediate service point connected to the network between the communication-center environment and third-party applications. The system also has a set of application program interfaces for transforming and transmitting communication-center statistical and configuration data from the hosting center to the intermediate service point and a set of application program interfaces for transmitting the communication-center statistical and configuration data from the intermediary service point to the remote third-party applications.
In a preferred embodiment the third-party application accesses the intermediate service point using the network and manipulates one or more Web-services hosted within the service point to configure to receive by subscription statistical, configuration and other data about specific communication-center entities described as objects including real time performance statistics and state information of those entities. In practice of the system, Java-based data is sent to the service point from the center and used for instantiating at least one object oriented data model, the model described as an XML document, which is rendered accessible in whole or part to a requesting third-party application or applications according to protocol used by the third-party application or applications.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,332,154 references and/or includes several other patent disclosures, the aggregate of which teach an object-oriented multimedia-based operating system termed a customer-interaction-networked-operating-system (CINOS) used in a multimedia communications center for managing all sorts of supported multimedia interactions both in and out bound. Using multimedia technologies and software, object-oriented framework, and both multimedia and text-based data storage facilities, which are cross-reference able, the system enables seamless and ongoing interactions to be managed. The interactions themselves can employ various multimedia types, and the system further enables interaction tracking, monitoring, recovery and utilization of records and associated data to further refine system capabilities in routing and other management tasks. Custom multimedia interfaces, multi-media dialog threading engines and interfaces, object-oriented GUIs and queuing systems, and a host of other technologically advanced components operate together according to enterprise rules to enable the system.
Among other capabilities of the system are capabilities for automated triggering of routing determinations where preferred media is selected for resulting interactions. In preferred embodiments interactions are recorded according to occurrence and are serially linked and can be referenced from a historical standpoint. The interactions conducted within the system environment proceed according to vertical business processes and rules and may include links to other recorded interactions involving one or more of the parties of the business process of an instant interaction. The linked historical interaction records can be of the same or of other media types related to or not related to the current interaction.
Enterprise systems in general often include several diverse and separate systems that are pulled together using a multimedia-center platform as a base platform. These systems offer some integration in the area of productivity and are often referred to as enterprise integrated architectures (EAIs). One of the key strengths of any customer interaction system is interaction management, which is a field the inventors have been active in for many years.
Traditionally, interaction management within a communication center refers to recording and/or monitoring a live interaction ongoing between a customer and a center operative, typically a center agent. In the more advanced systems known to the inventor and referenced in the cross-reference section of this specification, interactions of any supported media can be monitored and recorded in such a way that the business flow for one or a series of transactions including all of the individual interactions are captured and are recoverable. In this system authorized individuals can call up specific portions or entire chains of transactions or interactions by searching multimedia and text-based threads to produce a customized object-oriented view of information they are looking for.
As a further example, consider that agent Joe needs to review a historical record of a series of interactions relating to the purchase of a computer by a customer Tim. By entering the criteria of the customer name, purchase order and product number, all of the interactions that Tim conducted with the center that were related to the particular piece of business including the final transaction and any post-purchase interactions that occurred before the time that Joe initiated the search are recovered and presented to Joe as a graphics tree or object-oriented thread detailing the chain, with links to the actual stored media and complete text of the interactions. The fact that the chain represents multiple media types results from the unique ability of the customer interface of the system to enable the customer to select preferred media types for interaction. Therefore, the capability for pre-selecting a specific mode or modality for an interaction is already known to the inventor from the point of view of the client.
A limitation of the above-described system is that the customer must manually pre-set media preferences from offered media types at the time of interaction. If a customer prefers to interact in a preferred media type or types then he or she may set the interface to always respond in the given media types. The system may, in some cases automatically respond with a correct media type if a customer has already initiated an interaction with a specific media type and has no preferences set for a preferred media. The system described above is client interface intensive and could be further streamlined through enhancements in object orientation.
It has occurred to the inventor that an object-oriented system charged with managing customer interactions can be enhanced with new functionality that is not available in systems such as the systems described above. It has also occurred to the inventors that the definition of customer interactions should no longer be limited to single media sessions between two or more parties, but should be broadened to include multi-media sessions between two or more parties, the sessions happening concurrently between the parties.
It will be appreciated by one with skill in the art of interaction management that customer/center interactions are not the only type of interactions that occur within a communications center environment. Other types of interactions and interaction chains include those between business suppliers and business customers (B-2-B), those between third party applications and communication center applications (B-2-B), internal interactions between live personnel, and internal machine-to-machine interactions, internal machine-to-agent and agent-to-machine interactions, and other possible interaction mappings some of which may involve external sources. Furthermore, there are multiparty interactions such as chat, conferencing (video, audio), co-browsing applications, and the like.
It is desired that all possible interaction scenarios are recordable and recoverable and that the course of some interactions or interaction chains be automatically influenced by the occurrence of events that may relate to the business of the interaction or chain of interactions that are occurring or that will occur. Moreover, limiting media-type preferences to a client, in some cases, is not preferable to a communications environment host. For example, if a large number of clients of a communications center select all future interactions in the form of videophone for no specific reason, the costs of doing business could rise dramatically for the host. Although the above-referenced system provides the center with a capability to offer only media-types that it wants a client to use, a more dynamic solution is desired that provides some flexibility according to a rapidly changing business environment.
It is also desired that business transactions and various automated business processes, which may include many related interactions are recordable as a chain of interactions or “business chain” can be quickly modified in terms of business process should some related event necessitate a redirection or modification of business elements.
The inventor knows of an object-oriented system for managing interactions of multimedia types in a communication-center environment. The system has a virtual multimedia queue, a processor for processing events in the queue, an interaction server for selecting media type or types for events, a resource manager for reporting availability of a resource access point, and a data store for storing client information about media types available to the client and historical information about success of past use of those media types. In a preferred application, the system processes and routes incoming events of known media type to access points defined as systems or agents based in part on media channel availability of the access point, and wherein the system selects a media channel or channels for certain events in queue that are not pre-dedicated as specific media type events but are generated outbound or internal proactive contact events.
Proactive contacts are automatically generated and triggered according to business rules, which may include intelligent determination of a best media type or types to use according to history-based statistics regarding success and failure information of such contacts. Such proactive contact events, in some cases, can be triggered according to occurrence of a related event detected by the system, including system intercept or knowledge of a pending event.
Another major issue in interaction management is the capability of insuring that agents and knowledge workers having the appropriate skills are selected for interaction with clients of an enterprise. Traditionally, skills data about center agents are manually collected and maintained in a skills database for access by routing software. Creating a skills database that reflects agent skills accurately and persistently in a communications center is somewhat difficult. This is partly due to agent turnover within the center, agent skills improvements from previous skill levels, and so on. Likewise in a rapidly evolving environment that supports multimedia interaction where there is much more demand for various skills, some skills can quickly become obsolete as newer skills in newer applications, media types and technologies become “in demand” for replacement of the older skills. Compiling and maintaining an enterprise-wide skills database manually is a daunting task. However, this is the only proven way in prior-art enterprise contact center environments to accurately manage and utilize agent skill levels.
Manual compilation and updating of skill levels in different knowledge areas associated with an enterprise is costly and does not address skills that might avail themselves through agent knowledge of some resources that may be available externally from the enterprise domain. In fact many human skills that may be available are not discovered globally unless the owner of said skills reports the availability of those skills to an enterprise system. More particularly, those skills that are not reported are not discoverable and therefore are not predictable and cannot be tapped into by an enterprise system.
Therefore, what is clearly needed is a system and method for automated discovery and recording of enterprise personnel skills, including media-based skills and other skills availing themselves through agent-to-resource interactions that are not necessarily a part of routine enterprise business knowledge. Such a method and system would reduce enterprise costs by eliminating manual discovery, data entry, and updating routines associated with manual skill assessment and management and would improve routing intelligence by enabling use of most recent snapshots of improved skills including newly discovered and documented skills.